Federico Garcia Lorca wrote the Gypsy Ballads between 1924 and 1927. When the book was published it caused a sensation in the literary world. Drawing on the traditional Spanish ballad form, Lorca described his Romancero Gitano as the poem of Andalucia...A book that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where hidden Andalucia trembles . Seeking to relate the nature of his proud and troubled region of Spain, he drew on a traditional gypsy form; yet the homely, unpretentious style of these poems barely disguises the undercurrents of conflicted identity never far from Lorca s work. This bilingual edition, translated by Jane Duran and Glora Garcia Lorca, is illuminated by photos and illustrations of and by Lorca, his own reflections on the poems and introductory notes by leading Lorca scholars: insights into the Romancero and the history of the Spanish ballad form by Andres Soria Olmedo; notes on the dedications by Manuel Fernandez-Montesinos; Lorca's 1935 lecture; and an introduction by Professor Christopher Maurer to the problems and challenges faced by translators of Lorca. True to the spirit of Lorca s remarkable artistry, the book has been designed by John Morgan, one the UK s most imaginative typographic designers, with a gradated green cloth cover embossed on the front and back with Lorca s own playful line drawings."
About the Author: Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936) is one of the most popular of modern European poets and playwrights. His poems and plays about creation, desire and death have been translated into dozens of languages and transformed into song, ballet, opera and painting. Fascinated by the folk music of his native Spain, Lorca wrote two books inspired by gypsy rhythms: Poem of the Deep Song (on the world of flamenco and cante jondo) and the best-selling Gypsy Ballads. In Poet in New York (written 1929-1930) he turns the American city into an image of universal loneliness, and in tragedies like Yerma, Blood Wedding, and The House of Bernarda Alba he takes the measure of human longing and of the social repression that would contribute to his early death (he was shot by right-wing forces at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War). With this collection of ballads, carefully translated by Jane Duran and Gloria Garcia Lorca, the poet transforms into metaphor and myth the fantasy and reality of a marginalized people."